Did you miss me last week?  I can't seem to get over this "Kentucky Krud" as some would call it.  Doctors and nurses will tell you not to be around others until you are fever-free for at least 24 hours.  That's hard to do in some cases, because you might feel okay, but still have a fever.  With all the changes in the atmosphere lately, it's no wonder my head and body have had difficulty adjusting.  I may be getting to the point where I am allergic to the atmosphere here in West Kentucky just as I was diagnosed in Oklahoma.  (That's another story for another time.)  Anyway, I am dealing with the dizziness and the low-grade temps from day to day.  I hope this week finds you in good spirits and good health!

This week will be an interesting and fun week for me.  I will be attending the KySTE Conference for three days and even have the opportunity to present one of the sessions and facilitate another.  I am excited about my session on the Thinkfinity Community.  As I work on my Ed.D. online, I find it essential to have contact with others through an online format.  The Thinkfinity Community provides this for Kentucky teachers FREE of charge!  You can't beat that deal!  The attendees of the session will go away with their Community account established and information on how to connect with colleagues.  The session I am facilitating is on the Digital Divide.  What I hope to find through the session is how districts across the state are dealing with the "haves" and "have nots".  With all the emphasis on integrating technology, my concern is with those districts who cannot afford one-to-one projects and what we are doing to ensure all students have access to the technology they need to complete assignments and learn.  In this day and age, we'd like to think we are far removed from the one-computer classroom, but that is not always the case.  I'm looking forward to seeing what other districts are doing in this area of integrating technology.

I have been seeing lots of "smackdown" sessions about technology, both online and on site.  What "smackdown" generally means is to give you as much information as possible in the shortest amount of time possible.  For example, I've attended a Webinar about 20 tech tools in 20 minutes and just last week saw a Webinar given by Kathy Schrock which included 60 tech tools in an hour.  So, to me, a "smackdown" is giving information at the rate of one tech tool per minute.  Since I don't know how long it takes you to read through my blog entries, I'm going to assume you will go through these suggestions at your leisure and not feel like you have to get through each one in one minute!  :-)

Here are some links for you to try this week and in the spirit of the "smackdown", I'm just going to include a quick link to many Web sites and a quick statement about what they are:


3 Shots to Caffeinate your Presentations - three concrete tips for improving presentations
All My Faves - a quick and visual way to organize your favorite Web links
The American Journey - a video series which corresponds to Glencoe publishing, but free and available to all
Appitic - a directory of apps for education by Apple Distinguished Educators
Apples 4 the Teacher - educational resources for teachers and kids, pre-K - Grade 6
Biddle's Bytes - a blog which provides awesome tools and resources to support integrating technology
Bloomin' Apps - apps which support Bloom's Revised Taxonomy
BrainPop GameUp - a great place for educational games with lesson ideas
CK-12 Flexbooks - a selection of textbooks on many subjects, to view online
Conduit Mobile - a method of creating free mobile apps for all the major devices, no coding required
CuePrompter - an online teleprompter
Education Collection - lots of tools for teachers, including templates for Microsoft products
EduCreations - create and share great video lesson on an iPad or in a Web browser
Edutopia - K-5 iPad Apps - a blog which contains apps appropriate for K-5
Exploratree - ready-made thinking guides/graphic organizers (United Kingdom)
Gimme 5 Games - educational games, including physics puzzles
History Pin - an interesting way to "pin" historical and current pictures to places on a map
iLearn Technology - another blog on integrating technology into the classroom
JellyCam - make stop-motion films with a Webcam or photos
Kideos - videos for kids
Learn It In 5 - how-to videos for the technology classroom
Microsoft Office Web Apps - using SkyDrive, access, edit and share your documents and presentations online
Mission US - an interactive way to learn history; 2 missions now available (Revolution and slavery/Civil War)
My Name My Story - stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things
NBC Learn - time-saving tools and standards-aligned content for teachers and students
K-6 Learning Center - a learning portal by Ottawa Hills Schools
PaperRater - offers free grammar and spelling check, proofreading, plagiarism detection and more
ParentLink - a notification/communication system
Pencil - an animation/drawing program for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
Planbook - an online storehouse for lesson plans, simple to create and accessible anywhere
Schoology - a way to manage lessons, engage students, share content and much more
Science360 - videos about various topics in science
SlideRocket - a different kind of presentation offered for students and educators
Smore - design beautiful online flyers and publish instantly
SoundCloud - capture a voice, moment or music in seconds and upload audio you've already created
Studyladder - a mathematics and literacy program developed by educators (elementary/middle school)
Stykz - a multi-platform stick figure animation program
TagMyDoc -a new way to share documents; allows you to apply a QR code tag to your document
Teachers Pet - many resources for younger students and links to teaching ideas and resources (United Kingdom)
ThinkB4U - information about Internet safety and privacy

I hope you will find something among these links which will help you and your students in some way.  Enjoy your week!